He looked again, and saw a youth
Of weak and vicious face.
"A golfing caddie," he remarked,
And fled the curséd place.
From Poldhu the cliffs die down for an interval and disclose a flat shore. The little church lying down there, on the other side of the sandy cove, its small detached tower half built into the rocky hillside, is that of Gunwalloe. There is no village of Gunwalloe, and the living is held with that of Cury, two miles inland. Scarce removed above high-water mark, and in storms exposed in a large degree to the fury of the waves, the lonely situation of Gunwalloe church excites much wonder. Legends tell with misty vagueness that it was founded here as the result of a vow made by a storm-tossed mariner that, should Providence bring him safe to land, he would build a church where he came ashore. There is not the least reason for doubting the truth of this, and indeed it is the only probable explanation of a church being built on such a spot. The existing building is a late fifteenth-century structure obviously replacing a very early building, of which the bowl of a Norman font is the only relic. The usual mean and skimping restoration and refitting with pitch-pine may be noticed here.
St. Winwaloe, to whom the church is dedicated, died, in A.D. 529, Abbot of Landevenec, in Brittany. His life was written by Abbot Wurdestan of that place, in A.D. 884. "Gunwalloe" is simply a perversion of his name, which is sometimes also written "Guenole." A curious epitaph may be noted, on John Dale, drowned April 1808, in attempting the rescue of a sailor wrecked on Loe Bar.
"When softest pity mov'd his heart
A brother's life to save,